This invention relates to data transfer, and more particularly to a system that enables the transfer of data from one digital device to another digital device by touch.
The problem of moving digital media between common digital devices such as notebook computers, PDAs, smartphones, tablets, digital white boards and others has been well studied [Nacenta, M. A., Aliakseyeu, D., Subramanian, S. and Gutwin, C. A comparison of techniques for multi-display reaching. Proc. CHI, 2005, 371-380.]. USB drives, external hard disks or online data servers such as Dropbox [http://www.dropbox.com/] and Box.net [http://www.box.net] are some of the common ways to move files or media from one device to the other. Other means such as Email, Bluetooth are also used to transfer or share digital data. In addition, there have been attempts to make the transfer of digital media more tangible and interactive [Rekimoto, J. Pick-and-drop: a direct manipulation technique for multiple computer environments. Proc. UIST, 1997, 31-39.; Zigelbaum, J., Kumpf, A., Vazquez, A. and Ishii, H. Slurp: Tangibility, Spatiality, and an Eyedropper. Proc. CHI, 2008, 2565-2574].
It is an objective of the present invention to transfer data between digital devices by touch alone. The user can transfer data from one digital device to another by conceptually copying it in their body from the first device and pasting/passing back to the second device. The actual transfer of data occurs using the Internet, intranet network or any other type of data servers that the devices are connected to. In order to differentiate one user from another any of the authentication methods such as username/password, drawing a pattern on the touch screen, face recognition or fingerprint detection can be used.